I think 'chomp VARIABLE' in the summary is accurate. Consider

$ perl -we '($c,$d,$e)=("a$/", "b$/", "c$/");$g=chomp $c, $d, $e;print
+ $g,$c,$d,$e'
Useless use of a variable in void context at -e line 1.
Useless use of a variable in void context at -e line 1.
1ab
c
$ perl -we '($c,$d,$e)=("a$/", "b$/", "c$/");$g=chomp( $c, $d, $e);pri
+nt $g,$c,$d,$e'
3abc$
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It appears that the parens create an unnamed array variable. One difference between chop/chomp and print is that the former modify their arguments and throw an exception if they are ro.

Just another data point.

After Compline,
Zaxo